Matt Taibbi: From an Unlikely Source, a Serious Challenge to Wall Street

Something very interesting is happening.

There’s been so much corruption on Wall Street in recent years, and the federal government has appeared to be so deeply complicit in many of the problems, that many people have experienced something very like despair over the question of what to do about it all.

But there’s something brewing that looks like it might be a blueprint to effectively take on the financial services industry: a plan to allow local governments to take on the problem of neighborhoods blighted by toxic home loans and foreclosures through the use of eminent domain. I can't speak for how well the program will work, but it's certaily been effective in scaring the hell out of Wall Street.

How Less Work for Everybody Could Solve a Lot of Our Economic Turbulence and Make Life More Pleasant

By Sarah Seltzer
Posted on July 20, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012



"Get a job!" This jeer was perhaps the most frequent directed at Occupy protesters last year, and it was usually either met by "I can't! That's why I'm here" or "I'm already working two." Embedded in this ever-common taunt of protesters or other counterculture figures is the belief that if you just work hard enough in America, you will succeed, that any time spent with nose away from grindstone is time wasted. Of course, the truth that Occupy, We Are the 99% Tumblr and the recession opened many (but not enough) eyes to is that it's not enough to work hard, get a degree, sacrifice and slave anymore because the system in fact is broken.

America has a broad cultural emphasis on working hard as a goal in and of itself, and not on what working hard means. Earlier this week I wrote about five common-sense policy changes that would improve work-life balance for Americans. Mandating vacation time and family leave, embracing unions and improving childcare and workshare options would all make the major difference in our lives.

SIFMA Fires Shot, Excludes Mortgages in Localities that Adopt Condemnation From To-Be-Announced Market

On Monday, the financial services industry association (aka lobbying group) SIFMA said that it would exclude mortgages in localities that had condemned mortgages from the to-be-announced market, which is an important source of liquidity for new Fannie and Freddie loans. The promoters of the program, Mortgage Resolution Partners, issued a wounded-sounding response.

So what does this all mean? The short answer is that on the surface, this looks like a clever bit of banker thuggery. Despite MRP’s complaints, SIFMA has excluded other types of mortgages from TBA pools for similar-enough sounding reasons that it looks to be within its rights to do so here. But while this change is an effort at intimidation, its economic impact is trivial, although local homeowner/voters fooled into thinking otherwise. Ironically, Mortgage Resolution Partners is playing right into the SIFMA scare tactic via its close to hysterical response.

This is an interesting case of geekery meets gamesmanship. As much as I’d rather see the condemnation scheme move to the legal foodfight stage, the bankers have made it clear they are pulling out all stops to halt this plan before it gets that far.

Tom Frank: Mocking the Right's 'Free Market' Agenda Is Almost Too Easy -- A Real Problem Is That the Dems Don't Challenge It

By Elizabeth DiNovella and Thomas Frank, The Progressive
Posted on July 20, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

Cultural critic Thomas Frank loves a paradox. Why has the worst economic crisis in generations led to a resurrection of free market orthodoxy? How can Budget chairman Paul Ryan, Republican from Wisconsin, rail against “corporate cronyism” and then enjoy $700 worth of wine with hedge fund manager Cliff Asness?

In his provocative new book, Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, Frank looks at the conservative arguments for austerity in an economic downturn. In the aftermath of the collapse of Wall Street, the Republican Party morphed anger at big business into anger at big government.

The GOP’s “anti-big-business message catches the bitter national mood,” Frank writes. “What the Right actually does is deliver the same favors to the same people as always.”

Want a Real Recovery? Raise the Minimum Wage.

By Terrance Heath

July 19, 2012 - 3:39pm ET 

Scratch the surface of just about any economic debate this election year, and you'll find one issue that goes all the way to the core: the yawning gap between the 1% and the rest of us, as skyrocketing income inequality. A new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP), "Big Business, Corporate Profits, and the Minimum Wage," shows the extremes of that divide, and makes the case for raising the federal minimum wage as a means of closing that gap, and putting the national economy on the road to a real recovery.

The report explores the connection between stagnant —and falling — wages, and it's central finding explodes the argument that raising the minimum wage will cause employers to stop hiring, and the hurt small businesses that opponents of a minimum wage increase (and of the idea of a minimum wage itself) claim are the primary employers of low-wage workers.

The Time Bomb of Public Private Partnerships

Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer

The South London Healthcare Trust, which runs three hospitals in south-east London, has recently been put into administration by the UK Secretary of State for Health as it struggles with its debts and deficits (see, for example, PFI will ultimately cost £300bn, Guardian, 5th July 2012). This story has much wider significance than a struggle with the effect of cuts in health expenditure, as much of the blame for the financial plight of this healthcare trust is being put at the door of the costs of the use of the private finance initiative (PFI) for the construction of two of the hospitals managed by the trust. It is also seen as a forerunner for further financial difficulties for many other healthcare trusts arising from the PFI-financed hospitals. It is indicative of the dangers of public partnerships which are costly, inflexible and disguise the financial implications of infrastructure investment.



The UK PFI is a scheme whereby an infrastructure investment (such as school, hospital, road) is financed and built by a private company. Then the government leases the infrastructure along with the provision of the servicing, repair etc of the infrastructure investment. The leasing agreement has generally been for 25 to 30 years.

Dumping iron at sea does sink carbon

Geoengineering hopes revived as study of iron-fertilized algal blooms shows they deposit carbon in the deep ocean when they die.

Quirin Schiermeier

18 July 2012

In the search for methods to limit global warming, it seems that stimulating the growth of algae in the oceans might be an efficient way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after all.
Despite other studies suggesting that this approach was ineffective, a recent analysis of an ocean-fertilization experiment eight years ago in the Southern Ocean indicates that encouraging algal blooms to grow can soak up carbon that is then deposited in the deep ocean as the algae die.

 

ExxonMobil CEO Rants Against People Who Care About The Planet

By Wenonah Hauter, 1702
Posted on July 19, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

For anyone concerned about climate change, Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s CEO, has the fast and easy solution: he wants you to just stop worrying about it. All those statistics, warming trends, rising ocean levels and severe weather events are nothing more than a little “fear factor” according to a speech given by Tillerson last month.

Isn’t Fear Factor a game show in which people engage in risky and irresponsible behavior in the pursuit of money? So maybe what he said is true. Global warming is caused by people like Tillerson who engage in risky and irresponsible behavior in the pursuit of money.

Why reporters are in the firing line

The unspoken rule that gave journalists immunity is gone. Autocrats know that intimidating reporters consolidates power

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 July 2012 08.30 EDT

It has been a bad year for journalists. We lost the Sunday Times' legendary war correspondent Marie Colvin – her injured colleague, in a recent Vanity Fair piece, believes they may have been targeted after she appeared reporting from Syria on the BBC. William Dobson's new book, The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy, explains that autocrats and anti-democracy forces around the world are learning how to be nimbler and more efficient in suppressing populations, and one way to do this is control of news reporting in spots where abuses are taking place.

If you scan the reporting of Reporters Without Borders (and the examples they investigate of harassment, imprisonment and other assaults on journalists worldwide are extensive), you see subtle new patterns developing: in Jordan, for instance, a new law criminalizes with penalties as severe as hard labor such vaguely defined crimes as offending public decency, or any reporting that threatens "national security" or "public order". Reporters Without Borders concludes that this type of soft coercion chills investigative reporting. On the other side of the autocrats' toolbox of repression, there are regimes that don't bother with new laws because they just keep foreign journalists out or mow domestic reporters down: Bahrain's massacres, like Syria's, RWB asserts, are proceeding without check because they are out of range of cameras.

Matt Taibbi Dishes on the "Biggest Insider Trading You Could Ever Imagine"

By Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on July 19, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with Matt Taibbi. He’s a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine. His most recent in-depth piece is "The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia: How America’s Biggest Banks Took Part in a Nationwide Bid-Rigging Conspiracy—Until They Were Caught on Tape."

Matt Taibbi has also been closely following the Libor scandal. Sixteen international banks are accused of rigging a key global interest rate used in contracts worth trillions of dollars. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. Some analysts say it defines the cost of money. The benchmark rate sets the borrowing costs of everything from mortgages to student loans to credit card accounts.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi is with us here in New York. His latest book is called Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History.

Matt, welcome to Democracy Now!

‘Get Over It’: Climate Change Is Happening

By Eric Roston

What is anyone to make of American public figures who even in 2012 dismiss the risks posed by manmade climate change?

After a week of record heat and wildfires, Terry Moran of ABC News posed a question to guests on July 8, on the Sunday political talk show, “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”: Why should climate change be any more controversial than, say, neuroscience or brain surgery? Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, answered that climate change has much broader applicability than brain surgery and therefore draws a greater crowd of critics. E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, expressed incredulity about “why my conservative friends are so resistant in taking out an insurance policy… Because if we go wrong on this, we’re making an awfully big mistake.”

Political commentator George Will answered thusly: “You asked us -- how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. I grew up in central Illinois in a house without air conditioning. What is so unusual about this? Now, come the winter, there will be a cold snap, lots of snow, and the same guys, like E.J., will start lecturing us. There's a difference between the weather and the climate. I agree with that. We're having some hot weather. Get over it.”

IMF's Peter Doyle scorns its 'tainted' leadership

A top economist at the International Monetary Fund has poured scorn on its "tainted" leadership and said he is "ashamed" to have worked there.

Peter Doyle said in a letter to the IMF executive board that he wanted to explain his resignation after 20 years.

He writes of "incompetence", "failings" and "disastrous" appointments for the IMF's managing director, stretching back 10 years.

The Elites Are Unanimous: Lower Everyone's Wages and Standard of Living -- Except They Don't Say it Out Loud

By Jeff Faux, AlterNet
Posted on July 19, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

Editor's note: This essay is derived from Jeff Faux's new book, The Servant Economy: ​Where America's Elite is Sending the Middle Class, which William Greider calls a "really important book" that tells the "astonishing story of how class works."

Calls for a bipartisan “Grand Bargain” on taxes and spending for the next decade ring out daily, if not hourly, from the politicians and pundits who dominate our political media. But the national discourse is silent on the tacit agreement both parties have already made on the future that lies ahead for the majority of working Americans: a dramatic drop in their living standards.

The United States can no longer satisfy the three great dreams that have driven most of its domestic politics since the end of World War II: the multinational corporate class's dream of limitless profits; the military-industrial complex's dream of global hegemony; and the dream of the people for rising incomes and expanding opportunities. One out of three? Certainly. Two out of three? Maybe. All three? No.

Global CO2 emissions continue to increase


Per capita emissions in China reach European levels

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 3% last year, reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes in 2011. In China, the world's most populous country, average emissions of CO₂ increased by 9% to 7.2 tonnes per capita. China is now within the range of 6 to 19 tonnes per capita emissions of the major industrialised countries. In the European Union, CO₂ emissions dropped by 3% to 7.5 tonnes per capita. The United States remain one of the largest emitters of CO₂, with 17.3 tones per capita, despite a decline due to the recession in 2008-2009, high oil prices and an increased share of natural gas. These are the main findings of the annual report 'Trends in global CO₂ emissions', released today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).

Hating in Athens

by Michelle Chen

Douglas Kesse, a Ghanaian asylum seeker who recently landed in Greece, was bewildered by how he was received in the cradle of Western Civilization. Reflecting on the epidemic of anti-immigrant attacks, he told human rights investigators, ”As human beings, we shouldn’t be treated like this…. I am not an animal to be chased with sticks.”

When anti-immigrant violence flares up in our communities, it may seem irrational, crazy, sometimes outright barbaric. But there’s one universal rule that holds true around the world: xenophobic riots, purges, and state crackdowns throughout history have hewed to a chilling logic; people respond to real threats–primarily economic instability or social upheaval–by lashing out at make-believe threats–like the neighbor who came from Mexico to build your other neighbor’s house. This is hardly unique to the U.S.: the anti-immigrant hatred that has erupted across Europe is actually a chilling parallel to the bigotry exhibited toward immigrants in places like Arizona. And in a place like Greece, where economic crisis is tearing society apart, it’s open season for xenophobia.

Wall Street's Biggest Heist Yet? How the High Wizards of Finance Gutted Our Schools and Cities

By Pam Martens, AlterNet
Posted on July 17, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

Wall Street banks have hollowed out our communities with fraudulently sold mortgages and illegal foreclosures and settled the crimes for pennies on the dollar.  They’ve set back property records to the early 1900s, skipping the recording of deeds in county registry offices and using their own front called MERS.  They lobbied to kill fixed pension plans and then shaved a decade of growth off our 401(K)s with exorbitant fees, rigged research and trading for the house.

When much of Wall Street collapsed in 2008 as a direct result of their corrupt business model, their pals in Washington used the public purse to resuscitate the same corrupt financial model – allowing even greater depositor concentration at JPMorgan and Bank of America through acquisitions of crippled firms.

Libor Scandal: Why the N.Y. Fed Must Be Investigated

By Eliot Spitzer  |  Posted Monday, July 16, 2012, at 10:39 PM ET

So now the records are beginning to seep out.

The New York Federal Reserve knew about Libor games being played by the banks years ago and seems to have done precious little about it—except perhaps send a memo parroting the so-called reform ideas proposed by the banks themselves. Then nothing more. No prosecutions, no inquiries of the banks to see if the illegal behavior had stopped—just a live-and-let-live attitude.

Of course, this was the New York Fed led by Tim Geithner—who testified at his confirmation hearings to be treasury secretary that he had never been a regulator. Huh? As president of the N.Y. Fed, he was the most important regulator out there, and he didn't even know it?

There's No Hiding It: Citizens United Wasn't About "Speech" -- It Was About Takeover of American Democracy

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, BillMoyers.com
Posted on July 14, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

In all the hullabaloo over the Supreme Court’s decision on health care, another of its rulings quickly fell off the public radar. Before deciding the fate of the Affordable Care Act, the Court announced it would not reconsider Citizens United, the odious 5-4 decision two years ago that opened our elections to unlimited contributions.

Within minutes of that announcement, right-wing partisans were crowing about the advantage they now own, an advantage not due to ideas or personalities but to the sheer force of money. They were remarkably candid and specific.

The Slick "No Labels" Plan to Duck Debate, Cut Social Security and Coddle the 1%

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

July 16, 2012 - 10:31pm ET 

The Jeff Daniels character from The Newsroom would know what to ask the operators of an allegedly "grass roots" group called "No Labels":


"Why won't you publish your list of donors?"
"What's wrong with having legislators debate the issues publicly? Isn't that how representative democracy works?"
"How can you call yourself 'centrist' when so many of your ideas are unpopular, and in fact are even too conservative for most Tea Party members?"


He might have another question, too:


"What's wrong with labels? Don't they let us know what we're buying?"

Tomgram: Mattea Kramer, Spinning Ourselves Into a Deficit Panic

Posted by Mattea Kramer at 9:40am, July 17, 2012.

You couldn’t make this stuff up: thanks to Harold Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and the power of “earmarks,” the Army has bought $6.5 million worth of “leakproof” drip pans “to catch transmission fluid on Black Hawk helicopters," reports the New York Times.  Those pans were purchased from a company called Phoenix Products, whose owners, coincidentally, are contributors to the congressman’s political committee (and other Republican causes).  Oh, and according to the Times, “the company has paid at least $600,000 since 2005 to a Washington lobbying firm, Martin Fisher Thompson & Associates, to represent its interests on federal contracting issues.” Anyway, do the math and you end up with a $17,000 Army drip pan -- and there’s one tiny catch: another company sells a comparable drip pan for about $2,500.

Is anybody shocked?  This, after all, is the world of the U.S. military, which has been right up there with the 1% this last decade when it comes to garnering and squandering riches. It’s been ever more flush, while the taxpayers whose dollars it’s been raking in have done ever less well.  And symbolic as those drip pans may be, they aren’t even a drip in the bucket of Pentagon expenses when you start looking at the big-ticket items.

Fox & Friends Deceptively Edits Obama's Comments On Small Business

Blog ››› July 16, 2012 11:15 AM EDT ››› REMINGTON SHEPARD

Fox News this morning deceptively edited President Obama's remarks to make it seem as though he was claiming that small business owners do not deserve any credit for their own success. But Obama's actual remarks show that he attributed the success of small businesses to both the individual drive of small business owners, and to the benefit provided by influences such as great teachers, and government-created infrastructure.

President Obama, during a July 13 appearance in Roanoke, VA, argued that while small business owners' individual talents and drive allow them to attain their own portion of the American dream, credit for such attainment is not theirs alone. Obama pointed out that the success of small businesses can also be attributed to outside influences such as "a great teacher somewhere in your life" and investment "in roads and bridges."

Pioneering self-contained 'smart village' offers world model for rural poverty relief

California innovation experts counseling Malaysia's development drive

An innovative, high-tech "smart village" built in Malaysia provides a potential global template for addressing rural poverty in a sustainable environment, say international experts meeting in California's Silicon Valley.

Rimbunan Kaseh, a model community built north-east of Kuala Lumpur, consists of 100 affordable homes, high-tech educational, training and recreational facilities, and a creative, closed-loop agricultural system designed to provide both food and supplementary income for villagers.

Malaysian Dato' Tan Say Jim detailed the project Monday at a special meeting in San Jose of the Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council (GSIAC) -- a unique assembly of all-star international and Malaysian experts and leaders created to guide sustainable Malaysian development.

Financial fraud: When gatekeepers see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil

Media’s ‘bad apple’ theory no longer works

By Naomi Wolf; The Guardian
Published: 00:00 July 16, 2012

Last fall, I argued that the violent reaction to Occupy and other protests around the world had to do with the one-percenters’ fear of the rank and file exposing massive fraud if they ever managed get their hands on the books. At that time, I had no evidence of this motivation beyond the fact that financial system reform and increased transparency were at the top of many protesters’ list of demands.

But this week presents a sick-making trove of new data that abundantly fills in this hypothesis and confirms this picture. The notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers, but this week’s headlines make such a conclusion, sadly, inevitable.

The 9 Most Loathsome Lobbyists in Washington

By Ian Murphy, The Progressive
Posted on July 14, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

Tis the bleak post-Citizens United season in America—money equals speech, and corporations, super PACs, and an egregiously wealthy minority have the biggest mouths in the land. But the oligarchs’ work is never done. After the elections are bought, it’s back to the business of business—and, presumably, consuming yacht-loads of caviar and foie gras. Maximizing profit demands that high-powered lobbyists grease the wheels of legislation or grind them to a shrieking halt—whichever yields the highest return.

For your edutainment, below is a list of some of the most depraved lobbyists money can buy.

That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker


By PETER MAASS and MEGHA RAJAGOPALAN

THE device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers. 

Most doubts about the principal function of these devices were erased when it was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers responded 1.3 million times last year to law enforcement requests for call data. That’s not even a complete count, because T-Mobile, one of the largest carriers, did not initially reveal its total. It appears that millions of cellphone users have been swept up in government surveillance of their calls and where they made them from. Many police agencies don’t obtain search warrants when requesting location data from carriers. 

Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up — and more. Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services they think we want.

How A Koch-Affiliated Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage in Mainstream Papers

Local papers can't afford to cover the state legislature, so a Koch-linked venture is happy to help.

July 15, 2012  |  When Idaho state legislators proposed a seemingly uncontroversial bill to ban access to commercial tanning beds by minors earlier this year, IdahoReporter.com took up the issue with force.

The state news Web site, an affiliate of the conservative Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and overseen by the free market Idaho Freedom Foundation, posted six stories on the proposal between Feb. 16 and March 22, when the bill was voted down in a state Senate Committee. 

So-Called Fiscal Cliff Is Baloney; Our Economy Can Recover if Obama Focuses on What We Really Need: Jobs!

By Marshall Auerback, AlterNet
Posted on July 15, 2012, Printed on July 21, 2012

Here's something you're unlikely to hear when you turn on the TV. Deficits are not the problem in our economy. And tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year are not the solution. What America really needs is a serious national program to put people back to work. That's the key to saving the economy. So why don't we ever hear this in pundit-land?

The pundits are too busy talking about dreaded “fiscal cliff." At the end of 2012, they warn, many temporary but significant tax cuts are going to expire. The resultant increase in taxes means consumers will have less to spend which in turn will cause the economy to suffer.

Of course, both the president and Congress could easily extend these cuts. But there's a widespread -- and misguided -- fear that doing so will damage the country’s long-term fiscal health by failing to deal with imaginary dangers of what they call a “fiscally unsustainable” path. Both branches of government sadly embrace this misguided paradigm, and the arguments relating to the extension of the tax cuts (i.e. whether it should be for everybody, as the Republicans argue, or simply for those Americans making under $250,000 a year, as President Obama recently suggested).

Born poor? Bad luck, you have won last prize in the lottery of life

The rise of individualism and the celebration of the private over the public is undermining the strength of our social institutions

Will Hutton
The Observer, Saturday 14 July 2012

The economic and social crises are merging. The protracted "contained" depression is making life ever harder and disillusioning for those, and their children, trapped at the bottom – while making those at the top ever more robust about looking after themselves and their own. A mean world growing still meaner fosters division and mutual suspicion.

In the US, Robert Putnam, the pioneering social scientist whose book Bowling Alone set out an electrifying account of a new American loneliness, has been revealing the results of another round of social research. Class is becoming ever more important as a determinant of outcomes in American life; it now trumps race, he argues, and the differences can be observed very early on in the children of different classes.

Heritage Foundation Lies About Obama Welfare Reform Change

By Isaiah J. Poole

July 13, 2012 - 3:24pm ET

The Heritage Foundation today spread a falsehood about a change the Obama administration is instituting in the 1996 welfare reform law that has rapidly spread through the right-wing blogosphere. Letting Heritage and the right wing get away with this lie would do serious harm to people trying to pull themselves out of poverty.

Heritage headlined its Morning Bell email, "Obama's Imperial Presidency Guts Welfare Reform." Actually, if President Obama got all imperial on us and actually gutted welfare reform, that might not be such a bad thing, given how the law has actually failed in many respects to help people in poverty to get the economic support they need.

Rate of Climate Change's 'Evil Twin' Has Scientists Worried

Ocean acidification is moving at a rate faster than scientists had expected

- Common Dreams staff 

Climate change's "evil twin" -- ocean acidification -- has been increasing at a rate unexpected by scientists, says Dr. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Lubchenco told he Associated Press that surface waters, where excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has been concentrating, "are changing much more rapidly than initial calculations have suggested." She warns, "It's yet another reason to be very seriously concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere now and the additional amount we continue to put out."

Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech Is a New Low

POSTED: July 13, 9:51 AM ET

Wow. If you live long enough, you’ll see some truly gross things in politics, but Mitt Romney’s work this past week "courting black support" was enough to turn even the strongest stomach.

Romney really showed us something in his luridly self-congratulating N.A.A.C.P. gambit, followed by the awesomely disgusting "free stuff" post-mortem speech he delivered the next night in front of friendlier audiences. The twin appearances revealed the candidate to be not merely unlikable, and not merely a fatuous, unoriginal hack of a politician, but also a genuinely repugnant human being, a grasping corporate hypocrite with so little feel for how to get along with people that he has to dream up elaborate schemes just to try to pander to the mob.

Addressing unfair expectations for the next wave of educators

Posted May 15, 2012 at 8:54 am by Richard Rothstein


I regularly encounter, as I travel around the country, teachers who are dispirited by what they feel is an unrestrained contempt for their calling and career. These teachers feel that this contempt, initially expressed by politicians and “experts” with no classroom experience, has been repeated so frequently that it has spread to the public at large. They feel they are being blamed for all the inequities in American society, and are expected to rescue children from impoverished families and communities with no support from others in society. They feel abused by demands that they discard curriculum it has taken them years to develop, curriculum they are convinced has inspired children who had little prior interest in school, to love learning and inquiry. They do not believe that requirements that they focus on preparing students for standardized tests is respectful of the educational process or their own expertise, because such tests reflect only a tiny part of the knowledge and skills children need. These teachers are embittered and feeling put upon by those who claim to represent the interests of poor children but express this interest by trying to destroy the public education system that is the only institution attempting to serve these children. The teachers I meet all consider some colleagues to be inadequate and would like to see them leave. But the teachers I meet insist that poor performers are a small minority in their schools, and resent the now-popular and, they feel, indiscriminate witch hunt to cleanse schools of incompetents.

In Vast Effort, F.D.A. Spied on E-Mails of Its Own Scientists

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 14, 2012

WASHINGTON — A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.

What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.

The Austere Land

The domestic exile of John Maynard Keynes.

• Robert Skidelsky
• June 22, 2012 | 12:00 am

THE LAST FOUR YEARS have created what economists call a “natural experiment” in economic policy. As a consequence of deregulation and globalization, Britain and the United States experienced the financial crisis of 2008 in much the same way. Large parts of the banking system collapsed and had to be rescued; the real economy went into a nosedive and had to be stimulated. But after 2010, the United States continued to stimulate its economy, while Britain chose the stonier path of austerity.

The British are no more wedded to the idea of fiscal austerity than are the Americans. The Victorian aim of an annual budgetary surplus (in order to allow for the repayment of debt) has long since vanished. Both countries experienced only occasional surpluses in the postwar years associated with exceptional booms. The divergence of the two countries lies not in underlying attitudes but in political and institutional circumstances.

The 1% Connection: Mexico and the United States, Crony Capitalism and the Exploitation of Labor Through NAFTA

This is the ninth article in the Truthout on the Mexican Border series looking at US immigration and Mexican border policies through a social justice lens. Mark Karlin, editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout, visited the border region recently to file these reports. You can find links to the previous coverage at the end of this article.

The Richest Person in the World, Carlos Slim, Lives in Mexico

According to Forbes Magazine, Carlos Slim, 72, is the wealthiest person in the world, accumulating $69 billion in net worth as of March 2012.

Born and raised in Mexico City (of Lebanese Christian descent), Slim was well on his way to becoming a very rich man when he struck pay dirt. Under the Mexican presidency of Carlos Salinas, who served from 1988 to 1994, Slim jumped on the Milton Friedman-inspired south-of-the-border rush to privatization and led a buyout of the state run Telmex phone company.

Katha Pollitt: Obamacare(s) for Women

These days the only progressives who aren’t declaring Obama a huge disappointment are the ones who insist they never believed him in the first place. I wish I had a dollar for every woman who blames Obama for giving lip service to women’s rights while throwing them under the proverbial bus whenever convenient. (I shared some of that outrage in numerous columns here, so I guess I’d be paying one of those dollars to myself.) He made noted sexist Larry Summers director of the National Economic Council and invited the even more sexist Rick Warren to preachify at his inauguration. He compromised abortion care right out of healthcare reform. When HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected her medical committee’s recommendation that Plan B (emergency contraception) be sold over the counter, the reaction from feminists (including me) was instant and ferocious. It didn’t help that Obama called it a “common-sense” law that he supported “as the father of two daughters.” If he’d been the father of two sons, would he have wanted condoms available to those 16 and under only by prescription?

It’s right that we hold the president accountable—any president, because by now Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of John Edwards (!), would surely have let us down. But ladies, let’s give the guy some credit. This president took on the combined power of the Catholic, evangelical and fundamentalist churches only a few weeks after the Plan B fiasco by insisting that religious institutions get only a narrow exemption from birth control coverage requirements in the Affordable Care Act. That was a bit of a surprise, wasn’t it, coming from a man widely castigated as weak, timid, temporizing and eager to make deals with conservatives? Obama took a huge political risk for women’s health and rights—and in an election year. It’s not at all clear how this will play out in November, either, now that opponents are reframing the issue as “religious freedom.” I’d say the president deserves a hearty round of applause.

Paul Krugman: Who’s Very Important?

“Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.” That remark, by a donor waiting to get in to one of Mitt Romney’s recent fund-raisers in the Hamptons, pretty much sums up the attitude of America’s wealthy elite. Mr. Romney’s base — never mind the top 1 percent, we’re talking about the top 0.01 percent or higher — is composed of very self-important people.

Specifically, these are people who believe that they are, as another Romney donor put it, “the engine of the economy”; they should be cherished, and the taxes they pay, which are already at an 80-year low, should be cut even further. Unfortunately, said yet another donor, the “common person” — for example, the “nails ladies” — just doesn’t get it. 

Wall Street Journal Publishes Hit Job on Union Political Spending

By: David Dayen Thursday July 12, 2012 9:35 am

One of the ways that supporters of California’s Prop 32, the Trojan horse initiative to silence union activity in elections while facilitating corporate campaign spending, will probably press their case publicly is by claiming that unions spend ungodly amounts of money on politics. And unions in California do represent a counter-balancing of corporate cash. But this Wall Street Journal article takes this claim to the absurd extreme, arguing that union spending is “much larger than expected” by counting every single expenditure ever made as a political activity.

Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, a finding that shines a light on an aspect of labor’s political activity that has often been overlooked.

America Beyond Capitalism: An "Evolutionary Reconstruction" of the System Is Necessary and Possible

Thursday, 12 July 2012 10:55 
By Gar Alperovitz, Democracy Collaborative Press | Book Excerpt 

This is the first chapter in an exclusive Truthout series from political economist and author Gar Alperovitz. We will be publishing weekly installments of the new edition of "America Beyond Capitalism," a visionary book, first published in 2005, whose time has come. 

The first edition of "America Beyond Capitalism" was published a few years too early. Although it argued that the nation already faced a systemic crisis in 2005 (not simply a political or economic crisis), the financial break-down and Great Recession that began in late 2007 had not yet occurred—to say nothing of the political outbreaks that began with the Wall Street "occupation" in late 2011. The book's message seemed distant to many readers. To some, its argument that fundamental institutional rebuilding was necessary—and, on the basis of the evidence, possible—seemed odd. Nor did large numbers take seriously the conclusion's prediction concerning emerging political-economic realities:

The first decades of the twenty-first century are likely to open the way to a serious debate about these and other systemic questions...

The prospects for near-term change are obviously not great–especially when such change is conceived in traditional terms. Indeed, although there may be an occasional progressive electoral win, there is every reason to believe that the underlying trends will continue their decaying downward course...

Romney Used Conservation Money For Super Bowl Rally — Department Head Protested and Was Fired

From 2005.--Dictynna

Washington, DC — Brushing aside the objections of his own department head, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney took approximately $45,000 in states parks and conservation money to stage a pre-Super Bowl send-off rally for the New England Patriots football team. Romney then summarily fired the state's Conservation and Recreation chief and her top deputy.

Approximately 2,500 people attended the January 30th rally at Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium that prominently featured Romney. This low attendance meant that DCR spent approximately $18 per attendee. In addition, the Governor’s office admits that DCR was not the only state agency making a financial contribution toward the Patriots event; thus, the final taxpayer subsidy will be even higher.

In 2009, Americans paid lowest tax rates in 30 years to federal government

By Lori Montgomery

Americans paid the lowest tax rates in 30 years to the federal government in 2009, in part because of tax cuts President Obama sought to combat the Great Recession, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday.

A sharp decline in income — especially among the wealthiest Americans, who pay the highest tax rates — also played a role, according to the report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Household income fell 12 percent on average from 2007 to 2009, with income among the top 1 percent of earners decreasing by more than a third.

Still, at the very moment anti-tax protesters were emerging as the most powerful force in American politics, handing Republicans landslide control of the U.S. House, the data show that people were sending the smallest portion of their income to the federal government since 1979.

How LIBOR Impacts Financial Models and Why the Scandal Matters

Jul 9, 2012  |  Mike Konczal


If we can't rely on the accuracy of basic measurements used to set loan prices, we can't respond effectively to brewing financial crises.

Matt Taibbi asks why nobody is freaking out about the LIBOR scandal, Robert Reich calls it the scandal of all scandals, and Dylan Matthews has a great explainer of the whole thing here. Abigail Field has more at Reality Check.

This can be confusing stuff, so I want to go through a very simple example of how this impacts the markets.

Verizon Wireless wants to 'edit' your Internet access

commentary Here's a novel idea: Claim the First Amendment gives a carrier the right to pick and choose what you connect to via the Internet.

by Violet Blue

July 11, 2012 3:09 PM PDT

What if your wireless provider gave you Internet access and search results according to what it decided was a "priority"?

As a Verizon Wireless customer, I'm furious at the idea that it would "pick favorites" over what I was actually looking for -- especially if it was an emergency.

But that's just what Verizon is fighting in court to do right now. Verizon has filed a brief (Verizon vs. FCC) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the "freedom" to edit your Internet, dear customer.

14 reasons why this is the worst Congress ever

By Ezra Klein, Updated: July 13, 2012

This week, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. On its own, such a vote would be unremarkable. Republicans control the House, they oppose President Obama’s health reform law, and so they voted to get rid of it.

But here’s the punchline: This was the 33^rd time they voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Holding that vote once makes sense. Republicans had promised that much during the 2010 campaign. But 33 times? If doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result makes you insane, what does doing the same thing 33 times and expecting a different result make you?

Well, it makes you the 112^th Congress.

Why Obama’s Tax Plan Is About More Than Ending Tax Cuts For The Wealthy

Brian Beutler - July 12, 2012, 5:31 AM

President Obama’s renewed push to end Bush-era tax cuts for income over $250,000 a year has clarified the stakes of this November’s election. But if he gets his way, Obama’s plan could simultaneously allow the country to at least temporarily avoid the massive budget tightening set to occur automatically at the beginning of next year, which economists fear could lurch the country back into recession.

In January, across the board cuts to defense and domestic programs, totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years, are set to kick in automatically. At about the same time, all of the Bush tax cuts are set to expire, along with the payroll tax holiday and other temporary measures.

This global financial fraud and its gatekeepers

The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. We're seeing systemic corruption in banking – and systemic collusion

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 July 2012 10.47 EDT

Last fall, I argued that the violent reaction to Occupy and other protests around the world had to do with the 1%ers' fear of the rank and file exposing massive fraud if they ever managed get their hands on the books. At that time, I had no evidence of this motivation beyond the fact that financial system reform and increased transparency were at the top of many protesters' list of demands.

But this week presents a sick-making trove of new data that abundantly fills in this hypothesis and confirms this picture. The notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud – and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality – is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers, but this week's headlines make such a conclusion, sadly, inevitable.

Mitt Romney's offer of government of billionaires, for billionaires, by billionaires

In the Romney candidacy, the Republican party has found the apotheosis of the fact that it now represents solely the super-rich

Robin Wells
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 11.01 EDT

"Too much money" sounds like an oxymoron, especially when applied to American politics. But in the last week, Republicans are beginning to learn that lots of money can have its downside. Thursday's story that Romney may have actively directed Bain Capital three years longer than he claimed – a period in which Bain Capital-managed companies experienced bankruptcies and layoffs – caps what must be the worst weekly news cycle of any modern American presidential candidate. From images of corporate raiding, to luxury speedboats, to offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, to mega-mansions in the Hamptons, this week's stories suggest that the candidacy of Mitt Romney – poster-boy for the symbiotic relationship between big money and the modern Republican party – is in serious trouble.

Manufactured quotes

News organizations fail to disclose “regular Joe” businessmen’s lobbying ties

By Ryan Chittum

Two weeks ago The New York Times wheeled out that old chestnut of Great Recession-era economic reporting: Companies can’t find workers, despite high unemployment.

This one was mercifully buried inside Business Day, but it got 1,200 words all the same, including this top:

After the latest, disappointing unemployment figures, policy makers and economists continue to debate how American companies might create more jobs. But business owners and recruiters say thousands of jobs around the country are sitting vacant, particularly at small and midsize companies.

Weimar America: Four Major Ways We're Following In Germany's Fascist Footsteps

By Robert Cruickshank, AlterNet
Posted on July 5, 2012, Printed on July 15, 2012

What happens when a nation that was once an economic powerhouse turns its back on democracy and on its middle class, as wealthy right-wingers wage austerity campaigns and enable extremist politics?
It may sound like America in 2012. But it was also Germany in 1932.

Most Americans have never heard of the Weimar Republic, Germany's democratic interlude between World War I and World War II. Those who have usually see it as a prologue to the horrors of Nazi Germany, an unstable transition between imperialism and fascism. In this view, Hitler's rise to power is treated as an inevitable outcome of the Great Depression, rather than the result of a decision by right-wing politicians to make him chancellor in early 1933.

Historians reject teleological approaches to studying the past. No outcome is inevitable, even if some are more likely than others. Rather than looking for predictable outcomes, we ought to be looking to the past to understand how systems operate, especially liberal capitalist democracies. In that sense, Weimar Germany holds many useful lessons for contemporary Americans. In particular, there are four major points of similarity between Weimar Germany and Weimar America worth examining.